Friday, August 12, 2016

Yesterday I posted about us having such a dry summer and today it rained! Not a lot, but enough to give the garden and plants a good drink. I should have posted weeks ago, maybe the rain would have come sooner!

Every year we try to add to our gardening tools; last year it was shovels, this year it is hose nozzles. I know that sounds odd, but I like to have a decent nozzle at every hose. We have a hose in the garden room, one on the back deck, one on the front deck and one for the garden. The hose on the front deck has the RY Gardener nozzle and the nozzle works out really well because I can use it as a light mist all the way up to high pressure. Plus the handle is a no slip grip so even when my hands are wet I can hang onto it easily. I have used it for seedlings and even high pressure for cleaning off the deck.

I am already thinking of what will be on next year's shopping list. Floating row covers. We have had ours for about 13 years and they are really getting worn out. I use them not only for plant protection from frost, but also plant protection from chickens. They love any freshly turned ground.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

This has been an unusually dry and hot summer for us and it is really starting to show in our garden. Our well is only a 16' dug well, which has gone dry on us in past years so we are very careful with our water usage in years like this.

We save and use as much rain water as we can but even that storage is almost gone.

This year we have grown more food in planters and large pots on the deck and have an expandable hose with a fireman style nozzle that has been very handy. The nozzle makes it easy to control the flow of water so I don't feel as I am over watering and wasting water.

The weather forecast is for rain this weekend. I hope so, but that has also been the forecast the past few weekends and we have yet so see any of this rain. The next town over has, but not us. Meanwhile I will save all of the cooking water (full of nutrition for the plants) and water sparingly.
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Friday, July 29, 2016

For years I have been trying to meditate. It really shouldn't be that hard, but it is for me. As soon as I sit for more than 2 minutes I feel as though I need to get up and be doing something....have I watered the plants, are the dishes washed, what are we going to have for supper tonight....the thoughts never seem to stop.

Instead of sitting quietly I decided to try meditating to music and then maybe I could go from there to total quite.

I try to take the time every day for at least 20 minutes to just sit and listen to this CD. I have been doing it for about 5 days and I do feel more relaxed. I am hoping to be able to take my 20 minutes with this CD and later in the day do 20 minutes of silence. Wish me luck!

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

I know....black bean brownies?? How could they even remotely be something that would taste good. I will admit I had my doubts. I found the recipe at Just Making Noise about 6 months ago and filed it away as "interesting."

A few months ago we decided to try to incorporate more legumes, beans and fiber into our diet and I thought back to this recipe. What the heck...what have I got to loose. Worse case the chickens will have quite the snack.

I was amazed at how good the recipe came out. I did change it from the original a bit by reducing the amount of honey to about 1/3cup (we don't have many sweet things, so we can cut back a lot on sweeteners and still enjoy the taste, original recipe calls for 1 cup) and I used chicory root as an instant coffee substitute.

I have been making this recipe every week for the past month. Today I tried it with kidney beans instead of black beans. The taste isn't quite as rich, but still VERY delicious.

The recipe says to let them cool completely and refrigerate. While that does make the taste even better I can hardly wait that long and end up eating them warm, with cream. Fresh Jersey cream. I know.....how could it get better.

My husband likes them a little sweeter than I do, so he will top them with a little maple syrup. We also have added strawberries along with the cream. We are addicted.

I usually bake the brownies in the oven for about 20 minutes (you don't want to over cook), but today was sunny so I decided to try them in the sun oven. The cooking time was longer (because of the clouds) but they cooked up nicely. I love the idea of using the sun oven...free cooking.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Oil or butter an 8x8 baking dish

Combine the black beans, cocoa powder, eggs, vanilla, instant coffee, sea salt and honey into the food processor. Blend till smooth, the batter should be thick and will be kinda soupy. Add in butter and or coconut oil and blend about 15 seconds more.

Add walnuts, like large pieces of walnuts only pulse to mix in, if you like smaller pieces blend for about 5 seconds more. I like the smaller pieces and will blend them in.

The original recipe said to bake for 30-45 minutes. I found that to be way too long; 20-22 minutes seems to be right for me. You might have to experiment. When you press your finger in the middle it should make a dent. ( I have over baked these and they are still good, just a little dry. Cream took care of that. So would ice cream. )

Friday, July 1, 2016

It is hard to believe it is already the first of July. I can't believe how quickly the time goes by. Seems like only yesterday we were caring wood for the wood stove. I'm glad it wasn't yesterday...I definitely need the summer break from wood carrying!

For the first time ever we decided to buy some shares in a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to get some more fresh vegetables this year. We will still get the bulk of our food from our own gardens, but this year I would like to do more preserving and hopefully have enough vegetables to last the entire Winter/Spring until next harvest season. We always seem to run a few months short on some of our favorites. We are actually quite excited about the CSA. The farm is all organic and they also have herb and flower gardens that their customers can pick from.

Our chicken population has shrunk and grown. Friends of ours moved and we took their chickens for them. Welcome 5 new chickens. They don't have names because 2 are the same and the other 3 are the same, so we call them "the twins" and "the triplets" ("twin" or "trip" for short)

Molly and Emma (the mother/daughter team of cows) are happily grazing on the pasture we opened for them yesterday. I'm afraid Emma is developing a habit of getting out of the fence at night (how? good question) and doing a walk-about. She is in in the morning and no one has complained, so I guess she isn't getting into too much mischief. She hasn't touched any of our gardens so I don't think she's out for long. Probably just likes to prove she can.

We've had a "first" this year....Bluebirds have made a home here in one of our birds house. We see them flying around every day and we even have an Indigo Bunting. I never get tired of watching the birds. Neither do the cats.

Combine flour, oats, salt, honey and butter and mix well. I used a mixer for this. You don't want to over mix.

Spread 1/2 mixture (or a bit more if needed) into the bottom and up the sides of a pie plate, You can use your hands to pat the crust into the pan. Don't worry if the crust is not all the way up the sides.

Friday, May 27, 2016

As many of you noticed, up until a week or so ago we were away from our blog for quite a long time. The biggest reason was a new project (which I should have been writing about, but didn't)- a garden room.

We call it a garden room instead of a greenhouse because it is heated year round and is connected to our house. The room is heated with solar and wood. Our hopes are to incorporate solar heated water for heating next winter.

We are experimenting with tomatoes (which we enjoyed all of last winter....I know, I should have written), cucumbers, lettuce and greens and herbs. Oh..and we also had one squash plant last winter and got one squash.

The small piece of gutter pictured below has been planted with lettuce seeds. We plan on adding more gutters which we can suspend from the ceiling to gain more planting space.

Tomatoes are growing in hang baskets and large pots.

We put wire in front of the window for cucumbers to grow on. It is the first time we are trying cucumbers indoors. Next to the cucumbers is an avocado plant.

The goal is to grow as much as we possibly can during the winter to have fresh vegetables. I even put a few carrot seeds in a hanging basket.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Every once in a while we receive a product for free for an honest review. This week we received the Bar Brat Ice Ball Maker. I would not put a post on our blog about a product if I didn't honestly like how the product performs.

I will admit when we first opened the ice ball maker I was skeptical. It looked too small to really bother with for making ice. But after we made the ice we were quite happy. I like the fact that this seals well so we didn't have to worry about water spilling in the freezer (we have a small propane frig with a very small freezer, so things tend to get knocked around a bit). The ice also removed very easily ( the mold is made of 100% BPA- free silicone) and because of the large size of the ice balls we only needed one per drink.

Our drink of choice was our homemade rhubarb juice
I am also going to use the ice ball maker to freeze juice to add to drinks as well....some frozen pineapple juice in our seltzer water, maybe some frozen grape juice in the rhubarb juice. I think this would even be a fun way to freeze some fruit (inside an ice ball).

All this fruit talk is making my mouth water for summertime fruits! The grapes are budding and so are the apple trees. I have already started preserving some rhubarb and am looking for new recipes to try. One can never have too many rhubarb recipes!

Friday, May 13, 2016

This recipe has become one of our favorites. It is a recipe I got from my grandmother, and I have made a few changes to make it a little healthier. I have replaced the refined sugar with honey and maple syrup. We like this cobbler as a dessert, but even more for breakfast! It is good warm or cold.

Combine berries, flour and peel in a bowl. Combine well. Add the honey and stir in as well as possible. Pour into 8"x8" baking dish

In a medium bowl stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Cut the butter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture. Use a pastry blender, or your hands to work in the butter until the mixture resembles small peas. Add the milk and maple syrup and stir until the dough forms. Add a little more milk if necessary.

Drop the biscuit dough onto the berry mixture in globs. It is okay if the dough does not cover all of the berries.

About Us

Our philosophy is real nutrition, real food, not only in everything we grow and eat, but in
our recipes as well. For us, it’s not just about “organic;” it’s about “transcending organic.” We pride ourselves in farming diversified, practicing biodynamic farming, permaculture as well as common sense. Our farm has many aspects (orchards, grapes, bees, livestock) and each harmonizes with the other.
We live off the grid, getting our power from the sun and from the wind as well. We eat what we grow, grow what we eat and are in tuned with the natural world around us.
We’ve learned how to make do with less, and question what the “experts” tell us. We experiment with projects (solar, rain water, grazing) and ways to make our lives more comfortable without a big price tag or big carbon footprint.
We hope to share some of our ideas with you, our failures as well as successes, and to learn from you as well by sharing ideas.

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